


conjecture

by deadlybride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-Episode: s13e22 Exodus, Season/Series 13, implied sam/lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:06:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: After finally getting to safety in the bunker, Sam's still thinking about Lucifer.





	conjecture

The bunker's—full. Really full, people bursting out of every doorway. It's weird but it feels—good, too. Kind of good. That first night, Sam and Dean take the Impala into town and buy all the beer that'll fit in the Impala's trunk, and about all of the bread and cheese and bologna at Ladow's, and they stand there leaning against the car in the cool evening in plain, safe, regular Kansas, and Dean's shoulder is crushed up just underneath Sam's, so close against him that their shadow under the streetlamp looks like one long monstrous body. Sam doesn't move away. It hurts, it feels right. He's still wearing the filthy borrowed pullover. It covers the stains on his waistband, and it's warm. Not quite as warm as Dean, who for once in his life seems to be putting out bodyheat like a furnace. "Ready?" he says, finally, and Sam nods. Dean claps him on the shoulder, squeezes it.

They drive home. They distribute beer, and a couple of the refugees start up a sandwich-making station in the kitchen, and Sam talks to who he needs to talk to. Rowena, Cas. Jack, a little, but Jack's quiet. They open up the spare bedrooms, and make up pallets on the floors with spare blankets and sheets and pillows, and one of the women bursts into tears as she sits on the thin, hard mattress in room fourteen. When Sam touches her shoulder she says, barely understandable, "I'm pregnant," and the other woman with her covers her mouth and then wraps her up in a hug, and Sam stands up and moves away, gives them privacy. She's still crying, but he thinks—he thinks, for the first time, clearly, that they did a good thing.

He meets Dean in the hall outside the shower room. "Okay?" Dean says, and Sam looks at him, bone-tired but with his eyes clear, looking up into Sam's, and Sam smiles and says, "Yeah," and it's not true but it's not as much of a lie as it has been, other times. Dean nods, and then tugs Sam in, quick. A hug, again. His cheek a sandpaper scrape against Sam's, his hands curling into Sam's borrowed sweater. Sam sighs, leans into it. More doesn't really need to be said, between the two of them.

"You reek," Dean says, eventually, and Sam huffs. Dean pulls back, and claps Sam's cheek—Sam shoves his hand away, shoves his shoulder, and Dean grins and heads down the hall to his room.

The bunker's full but the noise is quieting down. A long day, a scary day, and with real food (more or less) and alcohol in their bellies the refugees are going to sleep hard. They'll have nightmares, probably, but they'll sleep anyway. Sam's well familiar with those kind of nights.

Finally alone. He turns on the shower, farthest left, the one he always picks. His shampoo, his soap. They're going to have to get more supplies, if everyone stays here. While it hisses down he peels off the sweater, kicks off his boots, shucks his blood-stained jeans, his boxers that are blood-stained worse. A lost cause. His blood, at least. He's never been sure if that's better than the alternative. Under the shower he stands there with it coming down nearly boiling, scalding his shoulders, his muscles at first seizing under the pain of it but then relaxing all at once, so quick he almost falls over. God. It has been a—a long, long day.

He sleeps. He has nightmares, and wakes up, and walks in circles around his bedroom. Dean wouldn't hear of anyone bunking down on the floor in their rooms and Sam wanted to—but he didn't want to, really, and Dean was right. He lays down again, and sleeps, and wakes up. Cavelike, in his room. He turns on his lamp and it doesn't feel much better. He gets a drink of water, and gulps it down, his feet bare and solid against the cool concrete. Porcelain sink. His eyes, in the mirror. His un-torn-out throat.

There's something that won't stop prickling between his shoulder blades. It's always like that, after Lucifer. That feeling of something watching. It isn't as bad, this time. Sam hopes Michael killed him. He hopes, god, he really hopes that's true. Trapped on the other side of impenetrable air, that look on his face—surprise, somehow, that after everything, Sam wouldn't fold. Where has he been, Sam wants to say, and he can't because he doesn't talk to Lucifer when he's not there. He stopped that, a long time ago.

Still, the prickle. He wipes his face, shoves his hair back into place. Changes, into clean jeans, into a t-shirt that isn't bloody, a flannel shirt that's his, that smells right. He'll have Dean turn that pullover into kindling. Out, into the bunker, and he walks extra-quiet through the halls because people are sleeping on the floors of the library, of the map room, in the gym even, and Sam gets into the kitchen to make the coffee—and there's, oh, his mom. Mom. Sitting, with a mug in front of her already, and it takes her a few seconds to look up at him and then a second after that before she smiles and says, "Hey, Sam."

He might never be used to this. The face from the pictures, moving. Here. Sometimes here, anyway. She gestures at the coffeepot, as though he doesn't know where it is, and he goes and pours himself a mug and then sits down across from her, sighing as he does it.

"Couldn't sleep?" she says. Almost bright.

"I got a few hours," he says, with a shrug. He smiles at her, but it falls off pretty quick. Hers did, too. It usually does. He rubs his thumb over the red lip of the mug, and watches her take a quick sip. "You?"

"Few hours," she says, and shrugs, and that time the smile's more sidelong, sly, and feels a lot more real than the one she points at him and Dean when she's trying to be reassuring. She's not great at it.

She only turned on the lights above the island and it's dim in here, shadowy. Caves, Sam thinks, and the prickle between his shoulderblades crawls in an instant down his spine and up his scalp and he shudders, hard, his skin and muscles all rebelling at once. Mom frowns, touches his wrist, and he shakes his head. "Sorry," he says. "It's just—I guess I should be used to it, now." She's still frowning. He licks his lips, and picks up his mug, her cool fingers slipping away from his skin. "Lucifer," he says, and he says it light, too. Like that's believable. "It's—I'm fine. It just, it takes me a while."

"He's trapped," she says. "Behind the door. He can't get out, right?"

Sam huffs. "That's what I thought last time," he says, and it 's way more bitter than he meant it to be. Mom's eyes flicker, her lips parting, and he sits back. They haven't… talked, much. Not about anything too hard. It's been her, and memories of Dad, and baby stories about him and Dean—and then easy things, the hunts of here-and-now, the stuff right in front them. The past, the painful stuff, that's been skimmed over. No one needs details. Sam wouldn't tell Dean details and Dean knows the worst of it anyway; no way he's going to lay that on his mother.

She skims her fingertips over the table, little circles. He pauses, looks at the line between her eyebrows, her mouth turned down. "Mom," he says, and she looks up at him. "I didn't mean—yeah, I think he'll, he'll stay trapped. If Michael didn't kill him. You don't need to worry about him, not anymore."

"I'm not," she says, with a small quick smile. Another lie. That's one Sam knows like he knows his own face, or Dean's for that matter.

While they walked through the cold morning toward the camp, Lucifer wouldn't stop talking. He kept pace, two feet behind Sam's shoulder, and he wouldn't shut his fucking mouth. Nattering on, like the worst memories Sam has of that insanity-year. _It's nice,_ he'd said, _that we can have these talks. We never talk anymore, Sam._ Soft and mocking. He always used to say he was the best boyfriend Sam would ever have—they just needed a little couple's counseling, is all.

Sam's skin ripples, again; he manages to keep it mostly subdued, this time. He didn't touch Sam, much, at least. Not after bringing him back, healing him. He leaned close, his lips too close to Sam's ear, but he didn't touch. Deal or not, dying again or not, seeing Dean one last time or not—Sam probably would've flipped, and Lucifer knew it. After everything, he at least knew Sam well enough for that. A long walk, either way, and all that goddamn talking. About Sam, and about Dean, and Jack, and about Mom, too. All those sly sidelong comments, trying to provoke. Like Sam didn't know better.

Still. He chews the inside of his lip. Mom's silent, hands wrapped around her mug. Dad's ring, dangling in the split v of her shirt. She kept it, somehow. The whole time.

"Mom," he says, again, and she doesn't look up this time. "What happened? After you fell through, back—right when Jack was born?"

"Got captured," she says. She sighs, and sits back, stretching out her arms, her shoulders round. "Have to say, Sam, they weren't very good hosts."

"Yeah," Sam says, dutifully turning up the corners of his mouth. Maybe this is where Dean gets it from. He sits up more, opens his mouth—closes it again. His scalp is crawling. "But—first, um. You were with, with Lucifer, right? For a while?"

She's frowning again. She takes a deep breath. Sam's vision flickers and she looks—entirely like a stranger, some refugee in his house, drinking his coffee—and then his brain clicks back and he sees her and she's Mom. Mary. "For a while, yeah," she says. "We, um. Traveled together. For a while."

He'd been so sure. She was alive, he knew it. He clung to it. If anyone in the world knew Lucifer's motives, it was Sam, and he was right. The thing is, he _knows_ Lucifer. For a few seconds the thought's too big for him even to breathe.

"Gosh, it's—not even five in the morning," Mary says, breathy like it's something to laugh about. "I can't decide, to go to back to bed or just start the day."

She isn't meeting his eyes, looking over the kitchen like there's something there to be seen. Sam stares at her and in the back of his head is the smirking lips riding close against the back of his ear, barbed wire on his wrists, hot pain flashing up inside of him, and that awful constant voice all amused, saying, _see? Aren't I nice? Couldn't you imagine something worse?_

Sam can, now. He can. "Mom," he says, "when you—with Lucifer—"

He can picture it, is the worst part. He's seen Nick's body, standing next to Mary's. His hand on her wrist. He knows exactly what it would be like. He can't say it. He opens his mouth and the words literally close his throat. Anaphylactic shock.

She sighs. "Sam, it wasn't—it wasn't that bad. He wasn't, I mean. Of course, he was awful, but he was keeping me alive. Like you said. Could've been a lot worse."

"Yeah," Sam says, finally, and has to consciously unclench his hand from his coffee mug. They're old, delicate. He doesn't want to shatter it. "Lucky, I guess."

Mary gives him a tight-lipped, small smile. "Anyway," she says. She stands up. Her coffee's not even half-drunk. "Maybe I will try to get back to bed. Didn't do much sleeping the past couple months, I should try to make up for lost time."

Sam nods, and says, "Sleep tight," and doesn't flinch away from her small hand on his shoulder. A victory, there. His skin itches, like a real allergy. That image is stuck, behind his eyes. How many worse things there are, he thinks, than no longer being alive.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](http://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/183981372244/conjecture)


End file.
